He's home, with a colonoscopy in his immediate (well, not during the weekend) future. We get to monitor, and call his GP to schedule invasive alien procedures next week.
I am very tired.
We're home.
My birthday was not as bad as it could have been, even sitting in the hospital room with Soren. Ellie came to keep us company, and brought me a delicious cupcake; Teresa came, and spent the afternoon and evening with us, and snuck out to bring me a flourless chocolate cake with candles and ribbons; and then she and Patrick took me home with them, plied me with delicious food and rye, showed me some footage from Leonard Cohen's recent shows in London, hugged me fiercely, and then made sure I got home safely. And in the middle of that, Soren called, to say that he would be released today.
Ellie came back to the hospital today, as I was showering Soren (and trying unsuccessfully to get all of the glue from the EEG out of his hair). We did final paperwork, got prescriptions (Levetiracetam, Baclofen, and Lexapro, for those of you keeping track), dropped them off, went for lunch, then Ellie went in pursuit of wine, cheese, and potatoes, while Soren and I picked up the prescriptions and came home.
I am still exhausted, and feeling flat and wary, but . . . well, we'll see. I know that I love him, and want to spend the rest of my life with him, and that's a basic fact of my universe. Let's see what we can build on that foundation.
He's now in a single room, with a technician watching him 24/7, for suicidal ideation. When I left him last night, he was wired up for an overnight EEG, and unthrilled by it. He has also informed me that he has fallen out of love with me.
Meanwhile, my divorce (amicable, and long overdue) from Mark has been granted, and I am now a single woman.
Happy birthday to me.
EEG yesterday afternoon; we didn't get results before I headed home, so I'm back there today. They said that he'd "probably" be discharged today; my bet is tomorrow or Thursday at the earliest.
He's groggy, and unable to focus, and still having spasms in his right leg, particularly as he falls asleep. The main drugs he's on are Keppra (IV at first, to saturate his bloodstream, then pills for maintenance, and Baclifin, to help with the spasticity.
Emotionally, he is scared and depressed, and frustrated. I am feeling oddly flat much of the time.
It's a bit after 2am, and I'm home. Soren's in a room at Methodist, and the plan is to saturate his system with anti-seizure meds, have a neurosurgeon take a look at the CAT scans, and see what happens. He'll be in the hospital at least until Monday or Tuesday.
He has speech, though he's somewhat disoriented by the hospital setting, and he's unhappy and drugged-drowsy.
Thank you all for prayers, good thoughts, and spreading the word. I'm going to follow his mother's directions and go to bed. I'll try to be more coherent in the morning.
I was living with Mark then, having married him seven months earlier, and someone -- Farber? -- called told us to turn on our television, which until then had been serving as my footrest under the kitchen table. I remember being dumbfounded, and hyperventilating, because it couldn't be true. But it was, and it is.
A toast to hope, and progress.
Well, I ordered two, one for Soren and one for me, and Soren's arrived today. It looks to be college-ruled, and I am lusting after mine in an unseemly manner. The cover is a pleasant texture, and the large book is a nice size -- I may have to get one of my own, as well as the small one.
I can tell that I'm going to succumb, and I've been so good about getting rid of most of the unused blank books on my shelf. Ah, well.
Are they fountain-pen friendly? I MUST KNOW!
Teresa, you are a wicked, wicked, wonderful woman.
I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, but I plan to write every day, and to go through all the half-full notebooks scattered around the apartment, culling ideas and putting them on disk. I've also got another, more personal writing project that I want to start, and a goal of writing something of moderate substance online at least twenty-five days this month.
I wish all of us luck, and success, whatever we're writing.
There were glitches in the sound system in the first two or three songs (Jon's lead vocals and Alisa's harmonies dropping out), and the stage is so small that if Patrick moved more than eight inches, he wound up with feedback, but once those were taken care of, it was a good, fun gig, with new songs, new harmonies (I think), and some really nice guitar solos. Half the people there were preoccupied with the World Series game on the televisions.
Teresa, there's always the old-fashioned custom of chipping in to rent some studio space and time, bringing supplies, and having a jam party, as a way of starting this sort of thing, so not everyone has to bring amps. I've done it before, but not in years. Should I look into studio space in Brooklyn and Manhattan?
Scraps and I will be there. We're looking forward to it.
Caroline @17:
Scraps and I had some bad moments during the first month of his hospitalization after the stroke (both after I'd gotten the proxy from his parents, and after we'd done the legal medical proxy; more than I posted here), when various people-in-authority did not want to give me either permission to see him, or information, and we're a het-looking couple. Of course, we're an interracial couple, so we're probably not a real couple, anyway.
Not that I'm angry or bitter.
Much.
Truth? I'm afraid to go to Florida now.
David Harmon @278:
"Something I learned way-back-when (in a magical exercise on shielding and invisibility), was that 'invisible' people tend to notice each other, even more clearly than they see 'normal' people."
That makes sense to me, in a bearing-witness, like-calls-to-like sort of way. I can almost always tell when and where another marked/invisible person enters the same public space I'm in, even if I'm looking in the opposite direction, and I will know where they are most of the time. Some of it is probably how the unmarked people are reacting, or not reacting, as well.
Like Fragano, I'm usually either invisible or a suspected shoplifter, though these days, as a solid woman with a shaved head, I'm also bordering on the too-weird-to-approach, I suspect. I'm not sure what's going to happen the next time Soren and I go together to a major store like that -- a small disabled guy with a cane, and a middle-aged black woman? Will our invisibilities cancel out, or will they maximize? Stay tuned....
Thank you, all, for your support over the past year. We've been rereading the original post and comments, and being shaken up all over again by what happened (and what didn't). It's been rough, but we're still here, and still together.
I continue to urge you all to get your blood pressure checked regularly, and to take the occasional reminder look at Jim's post about strokes, here -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010240.html.
Today is the ninth anniversary of our first date (made possible, in part, by matchmaking by Our Hosts) and, as I'd suggested last year in the ICU, this year, we're going to do something really boring together. Not sure what, yet, but really boring.
Elise @362:
. . . the behaviors and assumptions that he developed when he was powerless are no longer appropriate. They may have been survival skills then... but he's survived, and because he's survived, he has changed. He now has some power and concomitant responsibility for choosing how he uses it, and for cleaning up after himself when he does something wrong.
Wow.
I just have to pull this out and stare at it for a few days. It resonates with some of the things I've been learning over the past decade, and with some of the things I've been observing in a few friends. The shift from being powerless to having, and recognizing, one's own power is not often smooth and easy; those old patterns stay.
Serge @371 and Hmph @378:
I was bullied quite badly in fifth and sixth grades (long story omitted, but it was a bad time for schools in certain sections of NYC, and I (very smart, bookish, gawky, unwilling/unable to talk, and with absolutely no knowledge of the culture I'd just moved into) got dropped into a school mid-year, and was moved into the top class almost immediately), with the explicit approval of some of the staff at the schools. As I remember (and as my sister remembers), the main reason I survived* was that one of the major bullies found out that I still played with dolls, and owned a number of books. Somehow, we wound up with an arrangement whereby she would protect me from most of the other bullies (while still picking on me herself from time to time), and occasionally come home with me for lunch, or after school, and read and play with my dolls.
Thirty-odd years go by. I think about those moments occasionally, because they shaped me in a lot of ways (including a set of issues about being a "secret friend," but that's another story), and idly wonder what became of those girls.
Last year, my major bully/friend found me in one of the other online communities I frequent, and sent me a note, thanking me for being one of the few bright spots in her life in those years, remembering me making her sandwiches, playing with her, and talking with her.
Part of me wants to ask her if she remembers the other side of the relationship; most of me doesn't care. And part of me is glad that I helped her make it through. (As for most of the rest of them, if I learned that instant karma got them in high school or afterwards, part of me would be absolutely delighted -- and the rest of me would just hope that they didn't take anyone else down with them.)
* The other reason I survived is that eventually, I learned how to go berserk when attacked. When they know that you won't care about ripped clothes or blood, most twelve-year-old girls will leave you alone.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 54 |
| 2008 | 83 |
| 2007 | 35 |
| 2006 | 9 |
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